A day after police made a grisly discovery of a dozen corpses stowed away in a Weymouth storage unit, April Hopkins of Randolph is wondering if the bodies of her mother, son or granddaughter might be among those found.

Chris Burrell The Patriot Ledger @Burrell_Ledger

WEYMOUTH – A day after police made a grisly discovery of a dozen corpses stowed away in a Weymouth storage unit, April Hopkins of Randolph is wondering if the bodies of her mother, son or granddaughter might be among those found.

Hopkins said each of those bodies was handled by a former funeral home director who is now the target of a widening investigation.

Boston police discovered the bodies Thursday while executing a search warrant at the Route 18 storage facility as part of an investigation into Joseph V. O’Donnell, 55, whose last known address was in Mattapan, said Jake Wark, a spokesman for Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel Conley.

O’Donnell, who used to run a Dorchester funeral home, was arrested on larceny charges in April after police say he took $12,000 in pre-payments from an elderly couple, then closed up shop and was unable to pay them back.

O’Donnell’s appearance in a Dorchester courtroom at a pretrial hearing on larceny charges was waived Friday morning, but Hopkins, of Randolph, was in the court, looking for answers.

“I am devastated and very upset. I put a lot of trust in this man,” she said. “Is one of those bodies my son? Is one of those bodies my Mom? How do I know these cremated bodies are my Mom or my son? Who tests them to make sure they are my family members.”

Hopkins, whose eyes filled with tears as she stood outside the courtroom surrounded by TV cameras, said that she paid thousands of dollars to O’Donnell to cremate her 26-year-old son, killed in a car accident in 2012, and then her mother, who died of ovarian cancer later that same year.

She said O’Donnell also handled the cremation and funeral for her granddaughter, who died just minutes after a premature birth in 2011.

O’Donnell, whose funeral director’s license lapsed in 2008, is still being held by police on two larceny charges, while investigators are working to identify the bodies found in the Weymouth storage unit and determine when they were placed there, Wark said.

Police said O’Donnell rented the storage unit in Weymouth and another one in Somerville where police found cremated remains of more than 40 others Wednesday. Police don’t suspect foul play in those people’s deaths.

O’Donnell has not been charged in connection with the discovery of the bodies or the cremated remains, added Wark.

A State Police homicide detective from the Norfolk County District Attorney’s office was at the Weymouth storage unit Thursday but it’s unclear whether any charges will come from Norfolk County law enforcement.

On Friday afternoon, at businesses right across the street from the Weymouth storage units, people were still aghast at what had happened so close to where they work.

“I’ve been getting talk about it all day long,” said Charlie Wilson, owner of Uncle Charlie’s Finer Diner on Route 18. “It’s pretty bizarre. You would ever have known it was happening.”

Across the parking lot from the diner, Gene Sperry, a salesman for a roofing supply company, said the scene was riveting.

“We couldn’t believe it. They were sliding coffins out of there, coffin after coffin,” he said.

In Quincy, funeral director John Keohane said he was “shocked” to hear about the discoveries in Weymouth.

“It’s so sad for the families who may have to find out about this,” said Keohane, whose family operates funeral homes in Hingham, Quincy and Weymouth. “It’s just shameful.”

Keohane explained that in Massachusetts funeral homes do not own crematories, but send people’s remains to the crematories.

“They place a (metal) ID marker on the person, and that ID tag follows the person through the process to cremated remains,” he said. “The family keeps that marker, and that information is in the computer systems. It’s how the system works unless someone tries to get around the system.”

Reach Chris Burrell at cburrell@ledger.com or follow him on Twitter @Burrell_Ledger.